Confirmation for Sessions as attorney general drags on in Senate

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U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a committee member, waits for the beginning of a meeting of Senate Environment and Public Works Committee February 2, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Committee chairman Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) suspended the rules and passed the confirm of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to become the next administrator of Environmental Protection Agency with only Republican votes, after Democratic members have boycotted the meeting for a second day. The confirmation will need to be voted on later by the full Senate. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats promised to drag out the fight Wednesday over President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, as they put pressure on Republicans to commit to party-line votes to confirm his Cabinet.

The final vote for Sessions — one of Trump’s closest advisers and his earliest supporter in the Senate — is expected Wednesday evening, after 30 hours of debate from Democrats and a stunning fight between liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Republicans which ended in her being forced to sit down after she was accused of impugning Sessions.

Tuesday, Betsy DeVos was confirmed, 51-50, in a battle that sparked impassioned protests and the flooding of Senate switchboards by angry Democrats and liberal activists. But Sessions’ fight spurred some of the most jarring, and at times personal attacks, rooted in allegations that Sessions was a racist — claims the Alabama senator and his supporters have fiercely denied.

In the final hours of the debate Tuesday evening, after Republicans already blocked a Senate filibuster, Warren reignited that debate by reading from a 1986 letter Coretta Scott King sent opposing Sessions for a federal judgeship.

“‘Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts,'” Warren read from King’s letter. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell accused Warren of impugning Sessions on the Senate floor — a violation of Senate rules — and after a series of procedural votes, she was forced to sit down and stop debating.

Sessions was ultimately blocked from a federal judgeship and carried that battle scar into Wednesday’s final confirmation battle. But Sessions was expected to win another narrow, party-line confirmation vote in the Senate — where Republicans hold a 52-48 edge, just enough votes to secure his approval since Democrats ended the use of the filibuster on most nominations in 2013.

Meanwhile, Trump’s most important nominee — Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch — will continue meeting with Democratic senators from states that Trump won handily in November, foreshadowing perhaps the most important battle yet in this new administration.

Democrats not done yet

Democrats, who are using every tactic in their arsenal to delay Trump’s picks from being confirmed, even if they don’t have the votes to reject them, appear set to push Sessions’ approval for attorney general to late Wednesday evening. After that, they’re expected to repeat the same 30-hour debate plan for Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Tom Price and could easily drag the fight over Treasury pick Steven Mnuchin into the weekend.

The tactics have yet to work in actually defeating any of Trump’s Cabinet picks, but they have fired up a base of Democratic and liberal activists irate over a series of Trump actions, not least of which was picking a Republican mega-donor in DeVos to run the Department of Education.

“When you get millions of calls and demonstrations and a nominee is exposed for being who they are, it’s going to have a profound and positive effect, even if she gains office. So we’re very happy with the results and we’re going to continue them,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday.

But Republicans have chafed at what they call “historic obstruction” and have argued that Trump needs his team in place.

“This is the slowest time for a new Cabinet to be up and running since George Washington. This level of obstruction at the beginning of an administration is really record-setting in a very unfortunate way. It’s really time for our friends on the other side to get over the election, let this administration get up and get running,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday.

Even with the historically close vote on DeVos — Vice President Mike Pence was called into break a tie after a pair of Republican senators opposed her, a first in Cabinet fights — Senate Republican leaders have maintained a close hold on their 52-member caucus, making it appear highly unlikely that Democrats will get a chance to spike any of Trump’s nominees.

The only nominee who appears to be in any trouble at this point is Labor secretary pick Andrew Puzder, who is embroiled in controversy following news that he hired an undocumented worker to clean his house and was forced to pay back taxes. A series of Republicans on the Senate panel tasked with vetting him declined to say Tuesday whether they still supported Puzder.

Gorsuch and his handlers, meanwhile, are continuing their legwork on the Hill — meeting with Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, along with other senators.

The White House has focused their lobbying efforts heavily on Democrats from moderate-conservative states who are vulnerable in 2018 and could easily be swayed to possibly support Gorsuch, or at least oppose a filibuster of his nomination.